Mark Zuckerberg Finally Found a Use for His Metaverse — War

It used to be that many in Silicon Valley shunned developing killer apps for the Pentagon.

- Dave Lee

I can't think of any other deal that more encapsulates how Silicon Valley has changed in the past couple of years than the one announced on May 29 in a press release.

Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build and field a range of integrated extended reality products that provide war fighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield.

For starters, Anduril Industries is a defense tech company co-founded by American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, the man who created the Oculus virtual reality headset that was acquired by Meta Platforms for US$2 billion (S$2.58 million) in 2014, only for Mr. Luckey to be pushed out when it emerged he had financially backed a pro-Trump campaign group. That he would be welcomed back with open arms is yet another sign that such stances are no longer taboo in the halls of Silicon Valley companies. (It could be argued they never should have been.)

Second, developing technology for war had been considered a hard red line for many of the engineers working within those leafy campuses, at least in the era after the dot-com boom. At Google, for instance, workers in 2018 held walkouts and forced executives to abandon projects related to military use.